


The Old Apartment

by We_Band_of_Buggered



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Heartache, House misses the heck outta Wilson, Longing, M/M, and reacts in typical House fashion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:15:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_Band_of_Buggered/pseuds/We_Band_of_Buggered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House and Wilson have been separated for months. Between House's addiction and Wilson's expectations, the relationship was never going to work. House is completely certain that Wilson would never, in his right mind, want him back. Yet, here is House at midnight, breaking into the apartment the two of them used to share--the apartment in which Wilson still lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old Apartment

If you asked Gregory House if he’d been spying on his ex-boyfriend, he would have denied it with the modicum of sarcasm that would have left you uneasy, wondering if he was lying after all. Except, nobody asked him this, because nobody expected that even from House. And yet here he was at midnight, the road outside the apartment empty  but for the motorcycle slowing to a halt, the driver pulling off his helmet and staring over at the top floor apartment of the unassuming grey building. The curtains were open but the windows were dark.

James Wilson wasn’t home. But, of course, House already knew that.

He parked his bike across the street and walked towards the apartment as though it was natural, as though this was still his life—long hours, the ride home, the road crossed with cane in hand and helmet under arm. He smirked at the sight of the open security door and slipped through it. If you’d have seen him do it, you would have assumed he did so every night. He told himself he was nothing more than a well versed liar, but in actuality there was a part of him that marvelled at how easy it was to slip back into the routine—into this previous version of himself.

He stepped into the elevator and remembered it. He knew the heavy air, the garish walls ( _“I don’t mind the salmon walls.” “They’re pink.”)_ , the mirror spattered with its inexplicable dirt. Most of all he recalled what all of those things used to tell him.

_Almost Home._

The lift shuddered to life. Not only that, but it groaned with the weight of him as it pulled him to the top floor. When the doors opened, the fifth floor stretched out before him and House took a deep breath, exhaling an entirely different emotion than the one he had breathed in before it. He felt physically lighter, anxiety stripping itself from his bones and melting onto the uneven concrete floor, which looked like very little but almost felt like Everything. The clip of his cane on the concrete echoed, until he hooked it over his arm and fished for the keys in his pockets. They echoed too, loud and jangling, an innocent and comforting noise. He took a deep breath, let his eyes slip shut and slid the key into the lock.

_Home._

Wilson hadn’t changed the locks. If the situation had been reversed, House knew he himself would have changed them months ago, and the fact that Wilson hadn’t made something ache in his chest. Love. His love for Wilson ached like the wound it had become, and House stepped into the apartment and pushed the door shut behind him before he even opened his eyes.

The first thing that hit him was the scent, the warmth of it—all coffee and cologne—soft and sweet, all Wilson. That alone was the first snapshot, a moment caught in time and still lingering in the apartment—the ghost of the morning routine. The memory soaked into House’s mind, the early alarm to wake them, the alarm fifteen minutes later to actually get them out of bed, newspapers spread on the kitchen table or Wilson leaving in a whirl of that cologne, jacket pulled on hastily, coffee still too hot to drink despite his determination to do so. ( _“Why’d you turn off the second alarm? You knew I couldn’t be late today.” “I knew we’d be having fun this morning. That noise really kills my morning wood.” “House…”)_

The kitchen itself, which faced House directly as he stood at the door, was an echo of its previous self. Same sleek black floor, same old appliances but for the purple stainless steel kettle and the matching toaster. Same old dish rack, empty and spotless, so obviously Wilson’s apartment, so obviously not _House_ and Wilson’s apartment. To the left of the kettle, tall and proud, was the mug tree. The very sight of it tugged at something in House. Pangs rippled through his abdomen like stones thrown into a lake. His emotions were wild animals inside him, half of them hurting and loving and longing, the other half snarling at how pathetic the first half were. Gregory House would never have admitted it, but his fingers were shaking and his stomach was in knots.

The mug tree was ugly. There had never been any dispute about that, and looking at it now he realised that time apart from it hadn’t given it extra charm. It was green—the luminous, obnoxious kind—and was all but defective. At least two of its plastic branches could never be used lest the entire structure collapsed, lest a mug slip from its station and be shattered on the marble worktop. Even now it stood, squint as ever, cheap as ever, as resoundingly disappointing as it always had been. And yet, it still stood, adorned with new mugs but still in the spot House had left it in.

_“Here,” House had said, thrusting a plastic bag towards Wilson, “You want commitment, this is it.” Wilson had taken the bag, studied it briefly without opening it and then looked back up at House. His eyebrows knitted together as House watched him pointedly._

_“You keep your commitment in a plastic bag?”_

_They were in the kitchen late on a Saturday morning, both of them fatigued from last night’s argument—House’s guardedness, his obvious feelings for Wilson contrasted against his fear of showing them to others, let alone Wilson himself. Wilson had snapped on the Friday night, long since sick of only finding love when he read between the lines, and finally ready to say so. All sorts of pent up things had spilled from his mouth that night, first a tentative trickle and then something dangerous, a downpour that seemed suddenly very sure of itself, of its ability to crush House’s lungs. The rest of the night was a knife edge. He’d seen Wilson shaking with anger and stayed silent about it. Wilson had slept on the couch and House didn’t argue. That’s when he knew it could be saved. Wilson was still Wilson, after all, a kindness to him even in his anger. House’s leg had been particularly bad lately and a night on the couch was a punishment Wilson clearly hadn’t deemed reasonable for his partner. Before finally falling asleep alone in bed, House turned his thoughts into a loop of ‘I’m Going to Fix This, I’m Going to Fix This.’_

_House had slipped quietly from the apartment the following morning, before Wilson had even awoken. The lift had groaned and tried not to drop itself as it lowered to the ground floor, House’s cane echoed against the concrete as he walked, helmet under the other arm and his keys in his pocket. He rode the motorcycle to the nearest furniture store, lingered by its doors until a tired eyed employee unlocked them, and he grabbed the first thing that he even remotely liked for the kitchen, the first thing he thought Wilson might like. Everything in the kitchen was new. It was the only unfinished room of the apartment when they moved into it. The renovation had been complete for less than a week. House paid for the mug tree without having devoted much time to inspecting it for defects, or to searching for a higher quality alternative. He rode home to find Wilson and his walking shoes gone, and the moment he returned, House beckoned him to the kitchen, and now here they were._

_“Just open the bag,” House said, and Wilson did as instructed, his expression tight, close to the brink of his patience yet visibly calmer than the night before. He pulled the monstrosity from the bag and studied it, took in the sight, looked at it the only way that anyone ever could look at something like this particular mug tree—as though it were offensive and potentially radioactive. Wilson was holding it by one of its branches, using only his thumb and forefinger. His eyes flicked from the plastic and back to House._

_“What is this?” he asked, curious for the explanation but not impatient for it. If House had been anyone else, he might have been scarlet with embarrassment by now. Instead, his gaze never wavered from Wilson, and he launched into his explanation._

_“Proof that this matters to me,” he explained, “This apartment, this life, you and me living together here and me liking it. I’m contributing to what we’ve got here. We…need a place for our mugs.” He frowned now, beginning to realise how ridiculous this seemed._

_“You…” Wilson began, then stopped abruptly and thought for a moment, “You thought you could fix this with…uh.”_

_“A mug tree,” House said, deflated, “It’s a mug tree.”_

_“It’s disgusting,” Wilson said, but he’d said it with a laugh. His eyes were back on the mug tree, turning it around in his hands as if a new angle could improve it._

_“I know,” House said quietly._

_“It’s awful,”_

_“Offensive,”_

_“Like you,” Wilson said, and his eyes were back on House again, lips curled into a careful smile and his eyes glinting with amusement, and something that looked, to House, like love. And that’s how they had gone on._

_“It’s ugly,” House said, beginning to grin._

_“Charmless,” Wilson scoffed._

_“Poisonous,”_

_“It’ll glow in the dark,”_

_“Shouldn’t hold it for too long.”_

_“They can see our apartment from Space right now.”_

_“It’s insulting.”_

_“They’re laughing at us in Space right now.”_

House could almost see the two of them before him in the kitchen, he thicker haired and Wilson still youthfully skinny. Five years had somehow careened past them both, and now here he was on the other side of those years and trying desperately to find them again, wishing that time was a thing that could forgive. Wishing that Wilson was.

The floorboards—unchanged—stretched and spanned the front of the apartment, and led him next to the living room. A leather couch and a widescreen television were divided by a coffee table, the table stained by old coffee rings despite the coasters at the corners nearest the couch. House brushed his free hand over the stains, fingers against the wood, the tiny dips in the surface that somehow added to the charm. The coffee rings were him. He had done this. Here sat this undeniable echo of Gregory House ( _“Use the coasters, House. I bought them for a reason.” “I thought we bought the table for that reason.”_ ) The furniture was angled differently, the television against a different wall, the couch with its back facing the rest of the space behind, and it was Wilson’s home and Wilson’s home only, but here lingered Gregory House—immortal so long as the table remained.

He pulled his hand back from the table, and after a deep breath to ground himself he found his way to the back of the apartment and up to the door of its only bedroom. The door was white wood sitting slightly ajar. If House moved his head a few inches right he would have been able to sneak a glance inside, but instead he simply stood before it. Each breath came consistently after another but it no longer felt effortless. He could have stood here all night but it would have engulfed him. He pushed the door open with his cane, and it creaked into the otherwise silent abode.

The bedroom was a generous sized room with a thick beige carpet and windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. As soon as House stepped inside, his skin drank in the chill in the air. There was something refreshing about it, but also something sharp—more gentle, cold reminders of the past. Wilson had left one of the windows slightly open, and the curtain was billowing softly in the wind. Same king sized bed against the far wall, same bedside tables at either side, one of them piled with books, a neat stack of receipts, a pair of folding reading glasses and an almost empty glass of water. The other was entirely empty. The drawers were the same. They no longer held anyone’s clothes, anyone’s spare change, anyone’s phone charger. House checked them all, and hadn’t yet closed the bottom one when the wind began to whir more loudly beyond the window, changing the air in the room and slamming the bedroom door. House whirled around the face the door, exhaled a long breath and closed his eyes. This wasn’t the first brewing storm he had heard in this apartment, in this room. He’d heard countless, actually, in the dead of the night with his body against Wilson’s, legs entwined beneath the covers, or with Wilson’s head on his chest, or with neither of them feeling much like sleeping anyway. Same old bed in which they had once been a single entity together, a unit, a team, a pair of passionate lovers. In this bed they had been exhausted together, comfortable and relaxed together, wild and desperate together.

And then there was the floor at the foot of the bed—the place where Wilson had found him overdosed barely two weeks after House had checked himself out of rehab. ( _“I thought you really wanted help this time, House. I thought you really wanted to get better.” Wilson was by his hospital bed with tear reddened eyes, and House had tried to say something but the words had died in his throat. He pretended to prefer the silence and even he had felt the room turn cold with it. Cuddy had been standing in the doorway, pretending not to be watching them, but he realised later that she was there because she knew Wilson was going to leave)._

“I’m sorry,” House whispered. His shaky breath surprised himself. His overdose wasn’t the only thing that had turned the relationship sour—Wilson wasn’t perfect either—but it may well have been the deciding factor, the final straw, the full stop at the end of the sentence.

House heard the front door open.

James Wilson was wearing formal shoes. House could tell that much by the sound of his heels on the wooden floor of the living room. House, on the other hand, was still in the bedroom, eyes moving from the door to the closet and wondering what he was supposed to do next. Should he hide? And where? Inside the closet where his coats used to hang? Under the bed where his shoes were once kept? Wilson’s footsteps were getting louder, closer. The keys had been tossed into the dish by the door and the television had been ignored. It was late, Wilson had most likely been working all day, would inevitably wish to retire to bed but certainly wouldn’t be anticipating the sight of his ex, standing at the foot of their bed—of _his_ bed.

The handle began to turn and House simply watched it. He limped toward the door and stood against the wall, behind the door as it opened, breathing so shallow he might as well not have been breathing at all. He held his breath and waited, desperate suddenly, aching to see his frame, his dark hair, the simple act of James Wilson kicking off his shoes by the bed.

He got his wish. Wilson hadn’t changed much in the months since their breakup. In this half light, and from behind, he was maybe a touch slimmer, his hair perhaps a little unkempt but no less thick, he still carried the same briefcase and looked just as handsome in a suit as he ever had. House swallowed hard. Wilson didn’t notice him at first, left the door sitting open, moving softly with the wind in the air, and crossed the room to close the window. It was then that he noticed, by a simple anomaly in the corner of his eye, the one bedroom drawer that sat open. Something fluttered nervously through House’s stomach and it was so annoyingly unlike him. He should have shut the drawer. Wilson would never have noticed if not for the fact that there was no one in his life to open it anymore. He should have hidden in the closet. He should have left the room. He should never have come back to this building. He should have tried harder with Wilson when he had the chance. He ought to have been something better, something more.

“Wilson,” he said, because he couldn’t stop himself, because hadn’t said the name in months and because it would have been worse to let the moment stretch into anything longer, to startle Wilson out of what he had believed was a private, solitary time at home. Wilson jumped anyway, spun around so quickly that he almost lost his footing in the act, and was left all but leaning against the window. His expression shifted from one of surprise to one of confusion, a grown man squinting into a darkness his eyes had yet to adjust to. And then House could hear the sudden rain outside, heavy beads of water pelting to the ground, a relentless attack on the concrete below, a sound not unlike the static of a television.

And with one downpour came another. Wilson’s eyes adjusted and his expression became something harder, his back straighter. He knew exactly who he was looking at.

“ _House?_ ” he said, “God, what the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“Picked the lock,” House lied, and even he didn’t expect to hear the words he said next, “I wanted to see you.”

“You know where I work,” Wilson exclaimed, “They kept your job there too. You have friends there. Or…you have Cuddy there, your old team. You couldn’t have just called them and asked about me? You couldn’t have just called me? I…I didn’t even know you were out of—“

“I did my time,” House interrupted, stepping forward slightly, right into a stretch of orange light from one of the streetlights near the building. But it wasn’t blinding. He could see Wilson’s expression soften, could still see the kindness of him, and all the other things he had once fallen for. All the other things he still longed for.

“You mean,” Wilson began, careful at constructing the words, “You didn’t check out early this time?”

“Not a second early.”

“You finished rehab?”

“I finished rehab.”

There was a silence after that, nothing in the room but them and the sound of the rain. Wilson set his briefcase down and ran a hand through his hair, thinking, turning something over in his mind and not looking at House. And then he did again, and he nodded. House was just now noticing the darker skin beneath Wilson’s eyes, the skin that could have been slightly paler or just a trick of the light. He looked so tired. House wanted to reach out for him, wanted to take him to bed and let him sleep off all of the things that kept him awake, but he made no move.

“Good for you, House,” Wilson said, and the tenderness in his voice was like stitches bursting in a wound that no one could see. House adored that voice, so at the sound of it, at the familiarity of his name in that tone, he was bleeding into his chest from somewhere within, from the metaphorical part of his heart perhaps, from his soul if he believed in such a thing. He opened his mouth to say something but Wilson spoke too fast. “Now get out.”

“Oh, come on, Wilson, I—“

“No, House,” Wilson interrupted, a storm in his own right, sitting in perfect parallel to the one outside, “You _broke_ into my home. You’re sober, that’s great, but you’re still an ass. You have no right to be here, and you know that.” He paused, and it would have been just enough time for House to leave the room, to begin to make his way towards the door of the apartment that was all Wilson’s and barely his—not his at all. Except, he didn’t do that. He stood perfectly still, right in the spot he’d stepped into moments ago, and then Wilson was crossing the room and taking House by the arm. He wasn’t rough as such. He wasn’t going to drag House from the apartment, wasn’t going to fight him for the right to stand in each and every room. But nonetheless he had House by the arm, and was using just enough strength to underline the fact that he wanted House out of this room, this apartment, this building. With his cane hooked over one arm, House started limping towards the door, his other arm still in Wilson’s grasp.

“Wilson,” he said, “Listen to me. I came here for a reason.”

“Yeah,” Wilson scoffed, “to brag about your rehab and to scare me to death.”

“No,” House said. They had reached the doorway of the bedroom now, Wilson struggling to manoeuver House into the hall, and House shot an arm out to the wall and held himself there, his way of showing Wilson that he was immovable. Wilson laughed, but it was a hollow, humourless sound.

“Do you think this is… _noble?”_ he asked, “Romantic? Like breaking into a guy’s house is the way back to his heart?”

“Who says that’s where I want to be?” House challenged, and Wilson let go of his arm to throw his own into the air with despair.

“You!” he said, “You, and everything you’re doing right now. It’s typical you, House. You don’t take baby steps, you don’t do build ups. You do nothing or you go too far. You don’t tell me you miss me, you don’t call from rehab, you can’t even find a way to tell me you’re sorry—not once in six months—and instead you break into my house in the middle of the night! That’s not okay. It’s messed up, and it’s not okay. It’s—“

“I’m sorry,” House said. His voice was low, barely audible with the storm and with Wilson, but it stopped Wilson in his tracks regardless. He’d said it so quietly yet it had permeated everything. The words themselves were so small, but they seeped into the walls, became the structure of the very apartment and found their way to Wilson’s core and coiled themselves around it. House could see it in the way that Wilson visibly deflated, the anger expiring within him, replaced by something gentler but potentially even more dangerous.

“House...It’s too late now.”

“No,” House kept his eyes fixed on Wilson, “That’s crap. If you don’t want it to be too late, then it’s not too late. I don’t expect you to want me back. I never did. I just wanted you to know, accept the apology and we can both move on. Maybe we can be friends again.” ( _House had read the name badge on the stranger’s jacket and said, “Well, Wilson J. I’m House G. You’re pretty much the only person here who hasn’t tried to bore me to death yet. I like you.” “House,” Wilson J had smiled, “Unusual name.” “Yeah, it’s more commonly a noun.”)_

Wilson said nothing in response. In fact, he did nothing but let his eyes slip down to the floor, fixed on the skirting boards and House gathered his internal composure, took one last deep breath and walked to the apartment’s door. He swiped his helmed from the side of the couch—hadn’t Wilson noticed it? Had he seen it and tiredly forgotten that the sight of it no longer belonged here?—and left, pulled open the door and left Wilson in the hall. As much as he could stride, House strode towards the elevator, called it up with the press of his cane against the button, and slipped inside when it pulled its doors open for him.

He was leaving this place for the very last time. He was leaving Wilson forever. He could simply feel it in his bones.

The elevator lowered him to the ground floor and the doors parted before him. The building was getting ready to spit him out like he was nothing, like he had never been anything, and all he could do was let it. He stepped out into the hall of the ground floor, all dirty concrete floors and chipped paint on the walls, and then he was outside again, three long strides from the door and with his heart aching inside his chest when he heard it.

“Greg!”

House stopped dead. He did not turn around instantly. Instead he simply stood there, the storm ablaze around him, the wind pulling wildly at his clothes, the rain soaking them through to his skin. At times his vision blurred with the rain, every inch of him cold, and he stood there alone, alone with the storm, alone with Wilson. He turned back towards the doorway, and found Wilson’s expression a crumpled version of the anger he had come to know. He almost felt that Wilson’s expression was so pliable, so transparent that he could somehow see how he must have looked as a young boy, yet at once how he would one day look as an old man. As badly as he wanted to, House didn’t take a single step toward James Wilson. Wilson shouted over the rain.

“I want you in my life,” he said, “I don’t…I don’t want to lose you. But it is possible, that two people can love each other and just not be compatible like that. Maybe we’re not supposed to be together. Maybe the universe just doesn’t—“

“Fuck the universe,” House stepped towards Wilson at last, “If you want me, I’m yours.”

“I’ll always want you,” Wilson said, and the softness of it was everything—a declaration, a promise, an apology for his part in the collapse of the life they had built together. House wanted to speak, but the words would choke him, so instead he kept walking towards Wilson, back out of the storm and into the doorway. He closed the gap between them slowly, slow enough that his heart was racing with the anticipation, slow enough that Wilson could have pulled away at any moment.

But he didn’t.

The kiss was a flood. The kiss was an oil spill, a hurricane, a barrier forced down. The kiss was a motorcycle racing through midnight streets. Adrenaline whirled its way through House just the same, heightening everything. Somehow things seemed clearer—House and Wilson with their lips pressed together, that moment of hesitation slipping away until their hands were on each other, in the warmth beneath House’s jacket, on the small of Wilson’s back or sliding up and into his thick hair. Their mouths were as desperate as their wandering hands, hungry and wild. House thrilled at the reminder of how Wilson fit against his body, beneath his hands, the taught muscles, the softer parts of him, the passion with which he kissed.

When at last they pulled back, Wilson was red cheeked and slightly wider eyed than before. House’s hand had slipped into his and held it. What was the point of Gregory House if he couldn’t be some extension of James Wilson? He wasn’t sure, yet, if it was safe for him to smile.

“This isn’t because you broke into the apartment,” Wilson said firmly, making no move to pull his hand from House’s, “That was still messed up.”

And at last, knowing he would be forever safe from the storm, Gregory House grinned.

 

 

 

 


End file.
